Thursday, February 1, 2007

Hat's Off

I finally found the cord to connect my camera to the computer and had a working camera at the same time. So here is a recently finished project: a hat for myself.

It's knit on 16" Addi Turbos in size 10 for the first bit, then I switched to bamboo dpns. I just made up the pattern on the spot; it's basically 4 equally-spaced decreases every other round. When I got closer to the top I went for 8 decreases every other round instead. I like the swirly pattern that you get with all the k2tog that lean in the same direction.

I started it about a year ago, but when I went to Seattle this Christmas I decided it wasn't quite long enough, so I ripped out the bottom and added another 1.5 inches or so. You can tell, because I'd used up all of the yarn with the original hat, so I had to add the ribbing in another shade.

The yarn is from The Little Knittery. It was plain white merino originally. I hand-painted it with acid dyes (also from The Little Knittery--alas, they no longer carry any dyeing supplies) and then steamed it to set. I used 2 shades of green, teal, blue and magenta. The added band is one shade of green that has been overdyed with the other green.

I also made another hat for my husband using the same yarn and "pattern." His I dyed with beets, which ended up giving a sort of tan shade. I also lengthened his, and the new band was died with coffee, which actually ended up being a bit more red than the beet part. You can see the pattern a bit better in this picture.

I'm quite happy with my hat -- it's probably one of my favorite yarns to work with. Very soft and not at all itchy, which can be a problem with me and wool.